Tuesday, July 18, 2006

50 Albums that Changed Music

During one of the spirited arguments that punctuates High Fidelity, by way of insult Barry asks Rob, the book/movie's protagonist, "Why would someone who hates music own a record store?" I could not help but think of this query when perusing The Observer's list of the "50 Albums that Changed Music."


Kraftwerk #3 of all time? The Spice Girls in the Top 20? "Nevermind" only 47th? The list probably has most of the right albums, but their sense of ordering is bizarre and capricious. How can people who hate music make such a list? I am perplexed. And annoyed.


Hat Tip to the Thunderstick.

3 comments:

Thunderstick said...

I tend to agree with DCat on this. Probably the right albums, but the wrong order. How one can place Spice Girls over Michael Jackson's Thriller is beyond me. If you are going to include an ablum that popularized bubble gum pop, you'd have to go with New Kids on the Block before Spice Girls and if you want a more recent one, I'd think you'd have to choose whichever was the biggest album from either the Backstreet Boys or N Sync. But I'll leave that to DCat--he's the expert in that field. I remember sitting at a sports bar with him in Manchester, NH and hearing him say "mmmBop is really a catchy song. I bet Hanson's Xmas album is going to be really good."

Anonymous said...

I, for one, am tired of these "Top 50" lists. Way too subjective.

dcat said...

I don;t mind subjectivity -- we tend to privilege 'objectivity" far too much. My problem is where the list is just wrong!